


Sing For Me

by queerchickadee, Stregatrek



Series: Wlw with my wife [6]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: 'Q' or as we call him in our household 'this gay bitch is ridiculous', Barclay conducts a First Contact mission because Picard is busy being an opera snob, Crack, F/F, Gen, Other, Sito Jaxa cameos because we love to see her, gratuitous meme references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26228152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerchickadee/pseuds/queerchickadee, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stregatrek/pseuds/Stregatrek
Summary: A Plot: the crew of the Enterprise D puts on an operaB Plot: we're all ignoring QC Plot: first contactThis is just 100% crack, the latest in a long line of ridiculous decisions my wife and I have made. Please enjoy responsibly.
Relationships: Beverly Crusher/Deanna Troi, Ro Laren/Deanna Troi, implied Q/Bayreuth Opera House, one-sided Q/Picard for sure, one-sided Riker/Picard I guess
Series: Wlw with my wife [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1495607
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	Sing For Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CaptainLyssa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainLyssa/gifts).



> This time instead of coffee my wife and I drank wine.  
> For CaptainLyssa, who commented on the last ridiculous go-around that they'd like to see more. Well, friend, boy howdy.

"Okay captain, the temporal field is ready. Q cant detect us, but only for about fifteen minutes," Geordi said. " What was it you wanted to tell us?"

"I have gathered you all here for a very important reason. I have a plan for how we can finally make Q lose interest in us," Picard led.

His bridge crew leaned over the conference table, hands gripping it the way Riker held to his trombone while he slept.

“At last!”

“My love has come along,” Picard clears his throat. “I mean- um- here’s my plan.”

He steepled his fingers and let the silence sit for a beat, to enhance the drama. Then he simply said, "We ignore him."

They all looked around at one other, the brilliance of this plan slowly dawning on them. "Just….just like that?" Deanna days hesitantly, "What if he retaliates?"

"I think the captain has a point here," Riker chimes in, "If we ignore him, maybe he'll stop trying to steal my man."

"What?" Picard says.

"Oh, Captain, my Captain,” Riker sighs and clears his throat. “I mean- Nothing. Anyway, I think he feeds off the attention. If we stop giving it to him, maybe he'll just lose interest. Let's give it a go, it can't be worse than anything else we've tried."

The bridge crew leaves with a certain sense of confusion but a lot of resolve. _Operation Ghost Your Captain’s Tinder Date_ just might work.

* 

“I’m tired of plays.” Beverly sighs, looking at Deanna. “Let’s do an opera.”

“Do you know if anyone can sing?”

“Well, there’s a few lower decks officers,”

“Sure, sure, but we need to make sure the bridge crew is still starring in the episode.”

Beverly looks into the camera and nods. “Of course. I hear Jean-Luc knows some things about opera.”

"I can sing." Q chimed in. Everyone ignored him.

“I think Will Riker has a passing familiarity with the Bugs Bunny opera rip off,”

“Oh, well, then we’ll do the Rings Cycle.”

Beverly stood and walked to the Captain’s Ready Room. The door schicked open. “Jean-Luc, were you using the invisible floating cameras to monitor our conversation on the bridge?”

“I was. And I must tell you, Doctor, that if you put on a Wagner, I will be forced to reassign you.”

Beverly looked at him with alarm. “What?”

“Wagner sux,”

“How did you verbally misspell a word?”

"Wagner was a real jerk," Q mused, "built a cool theater though. Just an absolute banger of a theater. If buildings could fuck..."

“That’s not what we should be focusing our attention on at the moment, Doctor. Now, Verdi, Debussy, or Berlioz,”

Beverly cocks her head, leaning across the desk. “Are you only going to let me put on an opera if I choose a French composer?”

“No one said that,”

“Did I change my name to Odysseus without knowing?” Q asked the room at large.

“Fine. Verdi it is. Otello.”

“ _No_ , Doctor,”

“What _would_ you like?” “Les Huguenots,”

“Meyerbeer? I didn’t realize he was French.”

“Neither am I. Have you heard my accent?”

“Oh, worm.” Beverly stands. “I’ll put out a call for auditions.”

“Really, can _either of you_ hear me?” Q looked between them as Beverly left. “Jean-Luc, this isn’t funny,”

Picard pulled his jacket around his shoulders. “Computer, is that the wind? I think I just heard the wind. Is there a draft?”

The computer chimes. “Negative.”

* 

Worf, surprising no one, sang a traditional Klingon opera. “Now, Le Comte de Nevers,” Beverly tilts her head.

“He is an honorable man. I will play him with a warrior’s spirit.”

“Great,” Beverly made a note on her PADD. “Next!”

The next person to sing was a Lieutenant junior-grade, which means no one cared about their name or what they did, though it sounded somewhat scientific, which was cool. Beverly went ahead and cast them as the Queen, since there weren’t a lot of soprano-range people onboard and even fewer in the bridge crew. Thanks, Rick Berman.

Two more people that would appear only in this episode auditioned. Beverly cast them, since Meyerbeer wrote a grand opera and there were lots of parts to fill.

Will Riker’s deep voice resounded as the doors schicked open, “SING FOR ME!!”

“No!” Beverly shrieked as though a toddler racing around a backyard swimming pool had yelled ‘a knife’ when asked what they held.

“Out!” Picard’s voice resounded. “Get out, Will, get out!”

Riker shrugged, massive black cape sweeping as he spread his arms. “It’s what I know about opera!” He protested.

Q bursts into the audition room, dressed head to toe in Christine Daae's white dress. He shrieks the highest note in his pseudo-human register, nearly shattering the eardrums of all present. “Fuck off with that,”

“Fine, okay, I’ll be on the Bridge,” Riker turns to leave.

Picard stops him with a raised hand. “Actually, Number One, I think a night in the brig is in order.”

“But sir,”

“Go get in the brig,”

“This ship is a fucking nightmare,”

Riker storms out. Sito Jaxa watches him go with one raised eyebrow, her hands folded in front of her. “Okay, well, now that that’s over. I’m going to sing a traditional Bajoran ballad.” She clears her throat. “With a taste of your lips I’m on a ride,” she begins, her voice cascading beautifully from soprano to basso profundo.

“How did I never know you could sing like that?”

Sito shrugs. “It’s a Bajoran thing. We have incredible vocal range.”

“Do you want to sing Marcel?”

“Yes, please!” Sito beams. “I’d love to have a solo where I tell a room full of Catholics that me and all my Protestant friends are gonna shoot them,”

“That’s the spirit,” Beverly smiles. “Next,”

Data steps in front of the Doctor and the Captain, the Master and Commander, the weird dynamic tension duo, red and blue, the tall brunette and devoted blonde except that one of them is a redhead and the other has no hair. “I will be perfectly recreating the first known recording of _Les Huguenots_ scene by scene, mimicking each singer to the closest micro-note,” “Brent, we get it, you like doing imitations.”

“So I can play Raoul?”

“Sure, fine, whatever. We haven’t cast Valentine yet, but promise you’ll at least try to look like you want to kiss her.”

Data tilts his head. “What does it look like to ‘want to kiss?’”

“You know what, we’ll just cast Geordi, it’s fine,”

* 

“You know, I really ought to be supervising First Contact procedures,” Picard says offhand, watching rehearsals beside Beverly.

“It would probably be going better than this.”

“You’re right, I haven’t seen the crew so chaotic since Data had a snootful,”

“Wasn’t that our, like, second episode?”

“Second or third depending on if you count Encounter at Farpoint as two episodes or one, either way it was when we were still ripping our plots off from the original series,”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Do you think this is derivative of the Conscience of the King episode?”

Beverly shrugs. “I mean, sure, but what are we gonna do? Just not have opera?”

Picard raises his eyebrows. “Excellent point, Doctor.”

“Anyway, first contact?”

“The AkGJKLAHGYlkadjgoay people are very- well, actually, I don’t know, most of my attention has been on this performance.”

Nodding seriously, Beverly turns her attention back to the stage. “It’s going terribly, I think,” she smiles.

“You mean first contact? Or the opera?”

“Yes.” Q looks grimly at the stage, but neither Crusher nor Picard look around.

* 

And now for something completely different.

The sound of plucking harp strings a la ancient movie flashbacks plays in Beverly's mind, followed closely by the shrieks of Screaming Cave Moss. Oh, what harrowing months. Screaming Cave Moss, otherwise known as Speluncaem ulula had been explored by Starfleet for a time as a nonviolent deterrent for combat scenarios. As it would be of some use to the Enterprise and all of the whack-ass shenanigans that happen to them, maybe a creative solution was demanded.

Though, when those who lived and worked in the areas surrounding sickbay started complaining of waking nightmares, she decided to move this promising experiment to her quarters and have them thoroughly soundproofed.

This decision had proven fortuitous when she began a romantic relationship with one Deanna Troi.

On the day of the premier, Deanna squeezes Beverly’s to her tightly. “Are you excited?”

“After we went seven rounds, Deanna, I-”

“For the opera,” the empath clarifies.

Beverly laughs. “Oh, yes, for the opera. I am, yes, I think it’s going to be very enjoyable,”

When the lights of the theater go down, Beverly is conducting, even though she knows nothing about conducting, but fake it til you make it amirite?

Deanna watches, proud of her space girlfriend, holding Ro Laren’s hand, because in space you’re allowed to have more than one girlfriend. That’s what makes it the fully automated luxury gay space communism we deserve.

Picard settled down in his chair, secure in the knowledge that whatever was going to happen next, it wasn’t going to be Wagner.

Riker leaned over their shared chair arm.“So if you’re here, and I’m here, then who’s flying the first contact?”

“Broccoli.”

“What?”

“He’ll do fine. Shhh, the curtain is rising.”

When Barclay thought back to the moment he beamed down to LYCXGKTEIDXGK, he thinks he knows where he may have gone wrong. Perhaps it was the wrong move to dress in a medieval gown, and claim he was the Goddess of Empathy to this new species. The Galaxy would never know. In any case, negotiations were over before they began, and he couldn’t say he wasn’t glad. Though how he was going to write up this report was something he’d have to ask Kirk, the master of evasive reporting, about in his next holodeck session.

Meanwhile, the opera was going precisely how we the audience would imagine it was going. That is to say, not well.

Q has been trying valiantly to interject himself in the course of the opera, bursting in wearing everything from full drag to Lady Gaga's Kermit dress. But it was all to no avail, as the whole crew had gotten the memo on _Operation: Ghost Your Captain’s Tinder Date_ and dared not disobey orders. The alternative was far worse than anything Q could do… one of Jean-Luc's sad flute solos, broadcast over the ship’s PA system. Guaranteed melancholy, for weeks. Absolutely not worth it, they all agreed. Especially as the Captain had been favoring Careless Whisper these last weeks.

Picard smiled through it all, content in the knowledge that it wasn’t Wagner. Afterward, he met Barclay on the bridge. “So what’s going on with the GHDLFSKahgaosidhgaskdhf?”

Barclay blanched white. “Well, uh, well, we’ve- we’ve um, we’ve been declared mortal enemies of the House of ALHGLAKHSF so- uh, we, um, we- we should never go anywhere near that planet again.”

“Seems reasonable.” Picard settles into the Captain’s chair. “Engage.”

“Piiicaaaaaahhhhd, please,” Hearing Q beg might be nice, if they weren’t pretending not to hear him at all.

“Does anyone else hear the wind?”


End file.
